Cognitive: Students will understand that cheating is wrong, even if your friend wants you to do it as a favor. They will understand that true friends don’t ask you to do things that are wrong. Affective: Students will feel anger at cheating. They will feel anger at false friends. They will want true friends and to be true friends themselves. Behavioral: Students will identify true and false friends. They will describe different forms of cheating. They will interpret a situation where a form of cheating has occurred as being unfair to those who have worked for a reward.
Ask a student volunteer to recount the story of “My Best Friend?” Allow other student volunteers to fill in any important details about the story.
Explain that this story is about cheating and also about friendship. You might mention that the next chapter is about friendship too, for friendships are very important. Ask students if friendship is very important to them.
Point out that this chapter has the title “My Best Friend?” but that the title has a question mark after it, showing that the person telling the story isn’t so sure about her best friend any more.
Introduce the subject of cheating by writing the following dialogue on the board:
Teacher: What’s that?
Student: A cheat sheet with the test answers on it.
Teacher: Don’t you know it’s wrong to cheat?
Student: It’s only wrong if you get caught.
Ask students if there is something wrong with the content of this dialogue. Is the student right—is something bad only if you get caught doing it? Is it “okay” if you can get away with it? Affirm that getting caught or not doesn’t decide whether something is right or wrong.
Mention that cheating is an important school problem you are sure they have run into at times. Perhaps they have wanted to or have cheated themselves. Perhaps they have seen someone else cheat or talk about cheating. Perhaps someone has cheated off their papers or tests or copied their homework. Point out that cheating is wrong. Even among good friends, cheating is always wrong.
Ask them if they would agree that cheating is always wrong. If some people disagree, hear their reasons and bring up points to refute them, or let other students refute their reasoning.
Mention that most people agree that cheating is wrong. Still, many of these same people say they might do these things if they were sure they would not get caught. Ask once again: is it only wrong if you don’t get caught?
Clarify that cheating includes such things as copying writing word for word from the Internet, from a book, or from another student, copying another person’s test or homework answers, or bringing a “cheat sheet” to a test. It is also cheating to try to look in the teacher’s papers to find out what will be on the test. Ask students to name other ways people can cheat in school.
Explain that, first of all, cheating is unfair. Everyone doesn’t have the cheater’s advantage, so the students who worked hard and studied might get the same grade the cheater did; in fact, the cheater might get a higher grade. This is unfair to the students who really did do the work. Cheating throws the grading system off in a class because it is producing false results. It breaks the teacher’s trust in the students and the students’ trust in each other. If students think other students are all cheating, they might think they have to cheat themselves in order to compete. Cheating ruins the whole atmosphere of the classroom.
Point out that a cheater doesn’t feel right. He or she knows that a higher grade was not earned. Real pride comes from real accomplishment. There is always something sneaky and bad-feeling about cheating. A cheated grade still feels sort of like a popped balloon—there doesn’t seem to be anything inside it, and it doesn’t make the person feel “up” or happy.
Ask students if they believe that stealing is wrong. Explain that cheating is a form of stealing. Cheating is taking something without earning it, taking something that is not yours, and it is often taken from someone else. As in the story, Susan wanted to take Melodie’s earned knowledge and pass it off as her own. That is a form of stealing, because Susan wanted the reward without working for it. This is like wanting to be paid at a job but not being willing to do any work!
Ask students to think of other ways that cheating is bad. List them on the board.
Add that if a person cheats now, while in school, he or she may very well cheat in life later on. He or she might think it is okay to cheat on the job, or to cheat in marriage by flirting with someone else who is not your husband or wife.
Ask students to think of it this way: Would they be happy going to a doctor who cheated on his medical exams and didn’t really know what he was doing? How about a surgeon? Would they want a surgeon to operate on them if that surgeon had cheated on her tests to become a surgeon and didn’t really understand what she was doing? How about a car mechanic who cheated in getting his car mechanic certification and cheated on his training? Can you trust him to fix your brakes? What happens if your parents are driving down a steep hill and their brakes were worked on by a mechanic who didn’t really know what he was doing because he cheated instead of gaining the knowledge he needed? What if the brakes gave out because he, in his ignorance, made a mistake? People could be killed in a car wreck.
Point out that cheaters hurt other people as well as themselves.
Ask students how they like it if someone cheats in sports. Doesn’t it make them angry? They know it is unfair when someone cheats, breaks the rules, and does not get caught. It makes the whole game unfair, and sometimes the cheaters win the game and act like they are the best when the honest players know they were not. Affirm that cheating in school is the same thing.
Ask students to do the Questions for Reflection. If the class discussion has taken up all the time, the Questions for Reflection can be used as homework for the next class session.
Class Session 2
Remind students of the story “My Best Friend?” Mention that it was a story about cheating, but it was also a story that raised issues about friendship—what friendship is and isn’t.
Admit that some people might think Melodie was not a good friend to Susan because she wouldn’t let her cheat. Explain that sometimes people ask us to do things that are wrong by talking about our friendship with them. Sometimes our friends want us to do something that could get us in trouble, and if we say we don’t want to, they say, “I thought we were friends.” When students are older, they may hear someone of the opposite sex saying, “You’d do it if you loved me,” trying to play on the couple’s friendship to get the other one to do something wrong.
Ask students: Is it really being a good friend to try to get your friend to do bad things? What would have happened if Melodie had gotten caught letting Susan copy off her test? Do students think Melodie would have been in trouble? Yet Susan, her supposed friend, didn’t think about that. Susan only thought about herself. Good, true friends think of what will be good for the other person, not just themselves.
Ask students if they have ever been in a situation in which a friend asked them to do something wrong. Encourage students to share such incidents with the class, without naming any names. Help them name their feelings about it—angry, fearful, not wanting to lose the friendship by refusing, etcetera. Then ask them if they think that a person who tries to get them to do bad things is a true friend or a false friend.
Tell them you are going to give them a little “Friendship Quiz.” It is a True or False quiz. For each situation you read aloud, they are to call out “True” or “False” depending on whether the person is a true or false friend.
1. Tricia got a hold of some matches. She’s afraid to light them herself, so she asks Kelly to light them. Is Tricia a true friend to Kelly?
2. Felix stole a colored pencil from the teacher’s desk. He uses it, then slips it into his friend Carl’s desk. Is Felix a true friend to Carl?
3. Clive found a half-smoked cigarette on the street. He says, “Shall we try smoking it?” to Peter. Peter says, “No, I don’t want to, and you shouldn’t either. Just throw it away.” Is Peter a true friend to Clive?
Explain that in the story, “My Best Friend?” Melodie is a good friend to Susan. Ask students if she would have been a better friend if she had let Susan cheat. Why or why not? Point out that Melodie really wanted to help Susan. Ask them to notice in their student texts that Melodie is excited about helping Susan study for the test. She gets up early on a Saturday morning to lay out their math books, worksheets, scratch paper, and pencils. Her family is going to provide lunch and some play time. Melodie is doing everything she can to help her friend and to help her have a good time as well as study well for the exam.
So we know that Melodie is a good friend to Susan. Yet Melodie gets tough with Susan when Susan asks her if, instead of working on studying, she can just cheat off Melodie’s paper. Susan thinks that because they are best friends, Melodie should let her cheat.
But Melodie is a better friend than Susan thinks she is. Melodie won’t let Susan cheat and use her to cheat off of. Melodie is also a good friend to herself. She thinks, “Why should I give my work away? It wasn’t fair to me…”
Melodie says that a true friend doesn’t ask the other to be dishonest. Maybe because Melodie is such a willing friend and does so much for Susan, Susan isn’t mad that she won’t let her cheat.
Ask students if they have ever heard of the expression “tough love.” Acknowledge that we don’t usually think of love as being tough—we think of it as being soft, kind, gentle, warm, sweet, etc. But sometimes, to love someone, you have to be a little tough on him or her—a little strict. That is because love means helping others to be the best that they can be—it doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want, especially when they want to do something bad.
Ask students, “What grade did Susan get on the test? That’s a good grade, isn’t it, especially for someone who has a hard time in math. Do you think Susan felt proud of that test grade? Do you think she felt proud of her hard work? Do you think the next time she has to do something that is hard for her, she will remember getting this good grade and believe in herself that she can be successful?”
Repeat that cheating is a form of stealing, because it is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as our own. Ask students to look at the Exercise.
Exercise
Imagine the following scene:
You and a friend volunteered to paint a fence in the back of the school. You’ve worked hard, gotten sweaty, told other friends you couldn’t play with them, and even postponed lunch in order to finish. The fence looks great! A third friend of yours comes up and stays with you a while, not working but just talking.
Now the principal comes out of the school building. He is very happy with the painted fence. He praises and praises you.
Then he says, “As a special reward, here’s some ice cream.”
Your third friend, who didn’t do any of the work, has been smiling at all the praise and gladly takes an ice cream cone.
He didn’t do any of the work, but he’s willing to take the rewards. It’s a little like cheating.
What should you do in this situation? Discuss it as a class.
Some students will think the friend should get the ice cream cone anyway, and that the three friends should just enjoy the ice cream together. Others will say the third friend does not deserve the reward. Let them debate and discuss, and when the discussion has come to an end, say:
“Let’s think of it a little differently now. Pretend the principal does not have ice cream cones; he has a bowl of ice cream. There is really only enough for two people, but because there are three people there, the principal thinks he should divide the ice cream in three parts. Remember, the principal doesn’t know the third person didn’t do any work. What should the two who really did the work do in this situation? Should they still let their third friend have part of the ice cream and get less ice cream themselves? Should they speak up to the principal or should they speak up to their friend? What should they say?”
Let the students debate this scenario as well. Some should change their minds in this case. Ask them if, in this case, because the reward is only enough for two people, it is really unfair or a little like cheating if the person who did no work takes some ice cream.
Ask them to imagine that the third friend speaks up and says, “Oh, since there isn’t enough, I won’t have any. I really didn’t do any work. My friends deserve it more.” Ask what kind of feelings this would bring up in the two friends. Ask how the principal might feel about the third friend then. Affirm that everyone would feel more respect and liking toward the third friend for being so fair and honest.
Lesson Objectives
Cognitive: Students will understand that cheating is wrong, even if your friend wants you to do it as a favor. They will understand that true friends don’t ask you to do things that are wrong.
Affective: Students will feel anger at cheating. They will feel anger at false friends. They will want true friends and to be true friends themselves.
Behavioral: Students will identify true and false friends. They will describe different forms of cheating. They will interpret a situation where a form of cheating has occurred as being unfair to those who have worked for a reward.
Ask a student volunteer to recount the story of “My Best Friend?” Allow other student volunteers to fill in any important details about the story.
Explain that this story is about cheating and also about friendship. You might mention that the next chapter is about friendship too, for friendships are very important. Ask students if friendship is very important to them.
Point out that this chapter has the title “My Best Friend?” but that the title has a question mark after it, showing that the person telling the story isn’t so sure about her best friend any more.
Introduce the subject of cheating by writing the following dialogue on the board:
Teacher: What’s that?
Student: A cheat sheet with the test answers on it.
Teacher: Don’t you know it’s wrong to cheat?
Student: It’s only wrong if you get caught.
Ask students if there is something wrong with the content of this dialogue. Is the student right—is something bad only if you get caught doing it? Is it “okay” if you can get away with it? Affirm that getting caught or not doesn’t decide whether something is right or wrong.
Mention that cheating is an important school problem you are sure they have run into at times. Perhaps they have wanted to or have cheated themselves. Perhaps they have seen someone else cheat or talk about cheating. Perhaps someone has cheated off their papers or tests or copied their homework. Point out that cheating is wrong. Even among good friends, cheating is always wrong.
Ask them if they would agree that cheating is always wrong. If some people disagree, hear their reasons and bring up points to refute them, or let other students refute their reasoning.
Mention that most people agree that cheating is wrong. Still, many of these same people say they might do these things if they were sure they would not get caught. Ask once again: is it only wrong if you don’t get caught?
Clarify that cheating includes such things as copying writing word for word from the Internet, from a book, or from another student, copying another person’s test or homework answers, or bringing a “cheat sheet” to a test. It is also cheating to try to look in the teacher’s papers to find out what will be on the test. Ask students to name other ways people can cheat in school.
Explain that, first of all, cheating is unfair. Everyone doesn’t have the cheater’s advantage, so the students who worked hard and studied might get the same grade the cheater did; in fact, the cheater might get a higher grade. This is unfair to the students who really did do the work. Cheating throws the grading system off in a class because it is producing false results. It breaks the teacher’s trust in the students and the students’ trust in each other. If students think other students are all cheating, they might think they have to cheat themselves in order to compete. Cheating ruins the whole atmosphere of the classroom.
Point out that a cheater doesn’t feel right. He or she knows that a higher grade was not earned. Real pride comes from real accomplishment. There is always something sneaky and bad-feeling about cheating. A cheated grade still feels sort of like a popped balloon—there doesn’t seem to be anything inside it, and it doesn’t make the person feel “up” or happy.
Ask students if they believe that stealing is wrong. Explain that cheating is a form of stealing. Cheating is taking something without earning it, taking something that is not yours, and it is often taken from someone else. As in the story, Susan wanted to take Melodie’s earned knowledge and pass it off as her own. That is a form of stealing, because Susan wanted the reward without working for it. This is like wanting to be paid at a job but not being willing to do any work!
Ask students to think of other ways that cheating is bad. List them on the board.
Add that if a person cheats now, while in school, he or she may very well cheat in life later on. He or she might think it is okay to cheat on the job, or to cheat in marriage by flirting with someone else who is not your husband or wife.
Ask students to think of it this way: Would they be happy going to a doctor who cheated on his medical exams and didn’t really know what he was doing? How about a surgeon? Would they want a surgeon to operate on them if that surgeon had cheated on her tests to become a surgeon and didn’t really understand what she was doing? How about a car mechanic who cheated in getting his car mechanic certification and cheated on his training? Can you trust him to fix your brakes? What happens if your parents are driving down a steep hill and their brakes were worked on by a mechanic who didn’t really know what he was doing because he cheated instead of gaining the knowledge he needed? What if the brakes gave out because he, in his ignorance, made a mistake? People could be killed in a car wreck.
Point out that cheaters hurt other people as well as themselves.
Ask students how they like it if someone cheats in sports. Doesn’t it make them angry? They know it is unfair when someone cheats, breaks the rules, and does not get caught. It makes the whole game unfair, and sometimes the cheaters win the game and act like they are the best when the honest players know they were not. Affirm that cheating in school is the same thing.
Ask students to do the Questions for Reflection. If the class discussion has taken up all the time, the Questions for Reflection can be used as homework for the next class session.
Class Session 2
Remind students of the story “My Best Friend?” Mention that it was a story about cheating, but it was also a story that raised issues about friendship—what friendship is and isn’t.
Admit that some people might think Melodie was not a good friend to Susan because she wouldn’t let her cheat. Explain that sometimes people ask us to do things that are wrong by talking about our friendship with them. Sometimes our friends want us to do something that could get us in trouble, and if we say we don’t want to, they say, “I thought we were friends.” When students are older, they may hear someone of the opposite sex saying, “You’d do it if you loved me,” trying to play on the couple’s friendship to get the other one to do something wrong.
Ask students: Is it really being a good friend to try to get your friend to do bad things? What would have happened if Melodie had gotten caught letting Susan copy off her test? Do students think Melodie would have been in trouble? Yet Susan, her supposed friend, didn’t think about that. Susan only thought about herself. Good, true friends think of what will be good for the other person, not just themselves.
Ask students if they have ever been in a situation in which a friend asked them to do something wrong. Encourage students to share such incidents with the class, without naming any names. Help them name their feelings about it—angry, fearful, not wanting to lose the friendship by refusing, etcetera. Then ask them if they think that a person who tries to get them to do bad things is a true friend or a false friend.
Tell them you are going to give them a little “Friendship Quiz.” It is a True or False quiz. For each situation you read aloud, they are to call out “True” or “False” depending on whether the person is a true or false friend.
1. Tricia got a hold of some matches. She’s afraid to light them herself, so she asks Kelly to light them. Is Tricia a true friend to Kelly?
2. Felix stole a colored pencil from the teacher’s desk. He uses it, then slips it into his friend Carl’s desk. Is Felix a true friend to Carl?
3. Clive found a half-smoked cigarette on the street. He says, “Shall we try smoking it?” to Peter. Peter says, “No, I don’t want to, and you shouldn’t either. Just throw it away.” Is Peter a true friend to Clive?
Explain that in the story, “My Best Friend?” Melodie is a good friend to Susan. Ask students if she would have been a better friend if she had let Susan cheat. Why or why not? Point out that Melodie really wanted to help Susan. Ask them to notice in their student texts that Melodie is excited about helping Susan study for the test. She gets up early on a Saturday morning to lay out their math books, worksheets, scratch paper, and pencils. Her family is going to provide lunch and some play time. Melodie is doing everything she can to help her friend and to help her have a good time as well as study well for the exam.
So we know that Melodie is a good friend to Susan. Yet Melodie gets tough with Susan when Susan asks her if, instead of working on studying, she can just cheat off Melodie’s paper. Susan thinks that because they are best friends, Melodie should let her cheat.
But Melodie is a better friend than Susan thinks she is. Melodie won’t let Susan cheat and use her to cheat off of. Melodie is also a good friend to herself. She thinks, “Why should I give my work away? It wasn’t fair to me…”
Melodie says that a true friend doesn’t ask the other to be dishonest. Maybe because Melodie is such a willing friend and does so much for Susan, Susan isn’t mad that she won’t let her cheat.
Ask students if they have ever heard of the expression “tough love.” Acknowledge that we don’t usually think of love as being tough—we think of it as being soft, kind, gentle, warm, sweet, etc. But sometimes, to love someone, you have to be a little tough on him or her—a little strict. That is because love means helping others to be the best that they can be—it doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want, especially when they want to do something bad.
Ask students, “What grade did Susan get on the test? That’s a good grade, isn’t it, especially for someone who has a hard time in math. Do you think Susan felt proud of that test grade? Do you think she felt proud of her hard work? Do you think the next time she has to do something that is hard for her, she will remember getting this good grade and believe in herself that she can be successful?”
Repeat that cheating is a form of stealing, because it is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as our own. Ask students to look at the Exercise.
Exercise
Imagine the following scene:
You and a friend volunteered to paint a fence in the back of the school. You’ve worked hard, gotten sweaty, told other friends you couldn’t play with them, and even postponed lunch in order to finish. The fence looks great! A third friend of yours comes up and stays with you a while, not working but just talking.
Now the principal comes out of the school building. He is very happy with the painted fence. He praises and praises you.
Then he says, “As a special reward, here’s some ice cream.”
Your third friend, who didn’t do any of the work, has been smiling at all the praise and gladly takes an ice cream cone.
He didn’t do any of the work, but he’s willing to take the rewards. It’s a little like cheating.
What should you do in this situation? Discuss it as a class.
Some students will think the friend should get the ice cream cone anyway, and that the three friends should just enjoy the ice cream together. Others will say the third friend does not deserve the reward. Let them debate and discuss, and when the discussion has come to an end, say:
“Let’s think of it a little differently now. Pretend the principal does not have ice cream cones; he has a bowl of ice cream. There is really only enough for two people, but because there are three people there, the principal thinks he should divide the ice cream in three parts. Remember, the principal doesn’t know the third person didn’t do any work. What should the two who really did the work do in this situation? Should they still let their third friend have part of the ice cream and get less ice cream themselves? Should they speak up to the principal or should they speak up to their friend? What should they say?”
Let the students debate this scenario as well. Some should change their minds in this case. Ask them if, in this case, because the reward is only enough for two people, it is really unfair or a little like cheating if the person who did no work takes some ice cream.
Ask them to imagine that the third friend speaks up and says, “Oh, since there isn’t enough, I won’t have any. I really didn’t do any work. My friends deserve it more.” Ask what kind of feelings this would bring up in the two friends. Ask how the principal might feel about the third friend then. Affirm that everyone would feel more respect and liking toward the third friend for being so fair and honest.